1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to application distribution and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for streaming applications to a plurality of clients within a peer-to-peer network.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical computing environment may include one or more clients and servers. Furthermore, the one or more clients may form a portion of a peer-to-peer network. Generally, the server includes various computer resources, such as data processing resources, network resources, data storage resources, software resources and/or the like. As such, one or more clients utilize the various computer resources during normal computer operations. Occasionally, one or more clients request access to the various computer resources through a networked computer system. For example, the clients may request access to file data from the server. The data may be arranged in one or more files that may be communicated to each of the clients that requested the file.
However, during various operations that require application transfer, such as an application initiation, an update or a patch installation, and/or the like, the server provides the blocks associated with the application to each of the clients. Further, such operations require the server to provide identical blocks to each of the clients at approximately the same time. Because data is communicated to various clients at approximately the same time, network congestion may occur and thereby a degradation of an operational performance of the associated application occurs. Further, such data transfers may require additional computer resources that are drawn from the network, and therefore cause a degradation of overall network performance.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for streaming applications to a plurality of clients within a peer-to-peer network.